Imagianry[[Imaginary]], [[Symbolic]], [[Real ]] (Imaginaire[[imaginaire]], symolique[[symbolique]], rEel[[réel]])Of these [[three ]] [[terms]], the 'imaginary' was the first to appear, well before the Rome Report of 1953.At the [[time]], [[Lacan ]] regarded the '[[imago]]' as the proper study of [[psychology ]] and [[identification ]] as the fundamental [[psychical ]] [[process]].[[The imaginayr imaginary]] was then the owrld[[world]], the [[register]], the [[dimension ]] of [[images]], [[conscious ]] or [[unconscious]], perceived or imaginnedimagined.In this respect, 'imaginary' is not simply the oppsoite opposite of 'real': the [[image ]] certainly belongs to [[reality ]] and Lacan sought in anaimal ehtology [[animal]] [[ethology]] facts that brought out formative effects comparable to that described in 'the mirro [[mirror]] [[stage]].'
THE NOTION OF THE The [[notion]] of the 'SYMBOLICsymbolic' CAME TO THE FOREFRONT IN THE rOME rEPORTcame to the forefront in the Rome Report.tHE SYMOLS REFERRED TO HERE ARE NOT ICONSThe [[symbols]] referred to here are not icons, STYLIZED FIGURATIONSstylized figurations, BUT SIGNIFIERSbut [[signifiers]], IN THE SENSE DEVELOPED BY sASSURE AND JAKOBSONin the [[sense]] developed by [[Saussure]] and [[Jakobson]], EXTENDED INTO A GENeralized extended into a generalized definition: differential elemntselements, in themselves without [[meaning]], which acquire [[value ]] only in their mutual relations, and forming a closed [[order ]] - the question is whther whether this order is or is not comlete[[complete]].Henceforth it is [[the symbolic]], not the imaginary, that is seen to be the determining order of the [[subject]], and its effects are radical: the subject, in Lacan's sense, is himself an effect of the symbolic.Levi-[[Strauss]]'s [[formalization ]] of the elementary [[structures ]] of kinship and its use of Jakobson's binarism provided the basis for LAcanLacan's conception of the symbolic - a conception, however, that goes well beyond its origins.According to Lacan, a [[distinction ]] must be drawn between what belongs to the imaginary.In [[particular]], the relation between the subject, on the one ahndhand, and the signifiers, speehc[[speech]], [[language]], on the [[other]], is frequently contrasted with the imaginary relation, that between the ego and its iamgesimages.In each [[case]], many problems derive from the relations between these two dimensions.
The 'real' emerges as a [[third ]] term, linked to the symbolic and the imaginary: it stands for what is neither symbolic nor imaginary, and remains [[foreclosed ]] from the anlytic [[analytic]] [[experience]], which is an experience of speech.What is prior to the assumption of the symbolic, the real in its 'raw' [[state ]] (in the case of the subject, for [[instance]], the organism and its [[biological ]] [[needs]]), may only be supposed, it is an [[algebraic ]] x.The [[Lacanian ]] [[concept fo ]] of the 'real' is not to be confused with reality, which is perfectly knowable: the subject of [[desire knowns ]] [[knows]] now more than that, since for it reality is entirely phantasmatic.
The term 'real', which was at first of only minor importance, acting as a kind of saety safety rail, has grdually gradually been developed, and its [[signification ]] has been considerably altered.It began, anturally [[naturally]] enough, by presenting, in relation to symbolic substitutions and imaginary variations, a function of constancy: 'the real is that whcih which always returns to the same [[place]].' It then became that before which the imaginary faltredfaltered, that over which the symbolic stumbles, that which is refractory, resistant.Hence the [[formula]]: "the real is the [[impossible]]."It is in this sense tha that the term begins to appear regularly, as an adjective, to describe that which is [[lacking ]] in the symblic order, the ineliminable residue of all articulation, the foreclosed element, which may be approache,d approached but never grasped: the umbilical cord of the symbolic.
As distinguished by Lacan, these three dimensions are, as we say, profoundly heterogenoeus.
Ye t Yet the fact that the three terms have been linked together in a series raises the question as to what they have in common, a question to which Lacna has addressed himself in his most rcent [[recent]] [[thinking ]] on the subject of the Borromean [[knot]].
